Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 86105 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86105 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
The words hit me like a fist to the sternum because they’re familiar.
I was fourteen, sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s pickup truck, still in my sweaty gear under my coat because he refused to wait while I changed. The car smelled like cold coffee and tobacco and the leather of his gloves… and an exhausted kid. The windshield was smeared with salt and the radio was off.
We’d lost and my heart was hammering—a mixture of worthlessness and fear.
It all ran through my head like a bad movie on a loop—my missed assignment on the back-check, the way the other team’s forward slipped behind me, the puck sliding in like it was inevitable. I could still hear the final horn in my head, definitive as a judge’s gavel after a guilty verdict.
My dad’s hands were a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and a muscle ticked by his temple, a sure sign that it was going to be bad.
He didn’t speak at first, a tactic he often employed to amp my fear. He let the silence work on me, let it tighten around my throat like a rope. The streetlights smeared by in orange streaks.
And then the explosion came. “What the fuck was that?” His voice filled the truck, rattled the windows. “You just watched him go right by you. You didn’t move your feet. You didn’t take the body. You didn’t do a fucking thing.”
“I—” I started, throat dry.
He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. “Don’t. Don’t ‘I’ me. Not tonight.”
I stared at my knees, at my hockey bag wedged by my feet, at my still-damp gloves. “I tried,” I whispered.
My father laughed, an ugly sound filled with so much disdain, I shrank further into the seat. “Tried. Jesus Christ.” His eyes flicked to me, cold. “This isn’t just about you, Grizz. It’s about more than you and you’re too fucking stupid to realize it.”
My stomach hollowed as he jabbed a finger toward the windshield like he could point at my future. “It’s about your name. It’s about what I’ve invested. It’s about what people think when they watch you play. You embarrass yourself, you embarrass me. You get that? You’re not out there for fun.”
I swallowed hard and my eyes burned.
It didn’t escape his notice, though. “Don’t you cry,” he snarled. “Champions don’t cry. Champions don’t come home losers.”
My dad gripped the wheel tighter, voice lowering into a hateful and controlled register. “You want a second chance? You want to be worth a shit? Then you stop making it about your feelings and you start making it about winning. About more than you.”
The truck kept moving. The salt-streaked streetlights kept sliding by. And I sat there, small in my seat, trying to shove every feeling down into a place where he couldn’t see it.
It’s about more than you.
I kept repeating that phrase in my head, over and over again, knowing that this wasn’t the end of it. I’d physically feel my dad’s fury when we got home.
It’s about more than you.
I blink and I’m back, Daisy’s hand still on my arm, her mouth still forming the last word like it’s nothing. Like she didn’t just reach into my chest and pull out my heart, rotted and raw.
“It’s about more than you,” she repeats.
I stare at her, the blood roaring in my ears again. My skin feels too tight.
Daisy frowns. “Grizz—”
“Don’t,” I say, my voice different now. Rasping. Ice cold. Wrong. “Don’t say that.”
She looks genuinely confused. “Say what?”
“That,” I snap, jerking my arm slightly, but she doesn’t let go. “That exact—” My throat closes. I swallow it down just as I always have. Like I’ve been trained to. “Don’t.”
Her eyes soften, and that softness—God, it makes me angrier.
“I’m trying to protect you,” she says, quieter. “I’m trying to protect the team. There are fines, there are—there’s the league office, there are headlines, there’s—”
“There’s control,” I cut in. “There’s always control.”
Her brows knit in confusion. She’s in the present and I’m in the past. “This is my job,” she says.
“No.” The word comes out harsh. “This is you telling me to swallow it. To take it. To pretend it doesn’t matter.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” she insists, voice rising now too. “I’m saying you can’t go on live TV and call someone a fuckwad—”
“I just did.”
“And it’s not just about you,” she says again, frustrated, and she doesn’t even realize she’s repeating it, doubling down.
Daisy’s eyes widen slightly, like she senses the temperature drop but doesn’t know why.
I study her face—the way she’s so sure and righteous, so convinced she’s saving me from myself—and inside me, I make the ugliest connection.
The words. The tone. The demand that I be bigger than my pain because other people’s comfort matters more.
My dad’s voice overlays hers so cleanly it makes my stomach turn.